Selling a Royalton Unit During a Divorce: The Decree, Both Signatures, the Association's Role

What happens if one owner will not sign when a decree orders the unit sold?

Texas Family Code Chapters 6 and 9, read October 2026, give a court one set of orders while a suit for divorce is pending and another once the decree of divorce or annulment is rendered. Which set applies to a unit at The Royalton follows from where the case stands.

Before the decree, Section 6.501 lets the court, after a suit for dissolution of a marriage is filed and on the motion of a party or on its own motion, grant a temporary restraining order for the preservation of the property and for the protection of the parties. One item on that section's longer list is an order prohibiting one or both parties from selling, transferring, mortgaging or in any other manner alienating property of the parties, real property included, except as specifically authorized by the court.

While the suit is pending, Section 6.502 lets the court, after notice and hearing, render temporary orders, and one it names is an order appointing a receiver for the preservation and protection of the property of the parties. Both sections are written in terms of what a court may do.

After the decree, Section 9.002 says the court that rendered it retains the power to enforce the property division. Except as provided by its own subchapter and by the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, Section 9.006 lets that court render further orders to enforce the division of property made or approved in the decree, to assist in its implementation or to clarify the prior order, and to specify more precisely the manner of effecting the division if the substantive division of property is not altered or changed. Section 9.007 bars the court from changing the division, and confines an order to enforce to one that assists in implementing or clarifies the prior order.

Two further orders carry their own conditions. On a finding by the court that the original form of the division is not specific enough to be enforceable by contempt, Section 9.008 lets it render a clarifying order setting forth specific terms; the order has no retroactive effect, and the court provides a reasonable time for compliance before enforcing it. Where a party fails to comply with the decree and delivery of the property awarded in it is no longer an adequate remedy, Section 9.010 lets the court render a money judgment for the damages caused by that failure, in addition to the other remedies provided by law.

The Texas State Law Library, read October 2026, names the route where a former spouse does not do what the final decree orders: a suit to enforce the decree, under Texas Family Code, Chapter 9, Subchapter A. Your family-law attorney is the one to say which of these orders fits a particular unit.

Which document governs the sale, and what do you read in it?

The decree, or a written agreement the court approved, is what provides for the division of the unit. Read it for who is to sell, by when, and how the net proceeds are split, and for anything it says about the association's assessments while the unit is for sale and at closing.

Section 7.006 of the Texas Family Code, read October 2026, lets the spouses enter into a written agreement concerning the division of the property in a suit for divorce or annulment. The agreement may be revised or repudiated before rendition of the divorce or annulment unless it is binding under another rule of law. If the court finds its terms just and right, those terms are binding on the court, and the court may set the agreement forth in full in the final decree or incorporate it by reference. An agreement incorporated by reference is not required to be filed with the court or the court clerk, so keep the signed agreement with the decree and ask your attorney what the title company will need to see of it.

Section 6.602 governs a different document, the mediated settlement agreement. It is binding on the parties if it provides, in a prominently displayed statement in boldfaced type or capital letters or underlined, that it is not subject to revocation; is signed by each party; and is signed by each party's attorney, if any, who is present at the time it is signed. Where it meets those requirements, a party is entitled to judgment on it notwithstanding Rule 11 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure or another rule of law.

Who has to sign the sale documents?

The decree or the approved agreement is the first place to read for who signs for the unit. Other requirements sit beside it.

Section 5.001 of the Texas Family Code is written about spouses and a homestead: whether the homestead is the separate property of either spouse or community property, neither spouse may sell, convey or encumber it without the joinder of the other spouse, except as provided in that chapter or by other rules of law. An address in this building does not by itself make a unit a homestead, and whether the section reaches a particular unit, and what its exceptions cover, is your attorney's question.

At the county, the Harris County Clerk's Real Property Department requires the appropriate person to sign a document and that person's signature to be notarized, and it names a deed among its examples. On the title side, Schedule C of the Texas Department of Insurance's Form T-7 opens its standing requirements with documents creating the title or interest, which must be approved by the company and must be signed, notarized and filed for record.

What does the association have to furnish, and what is it owed?

Texas Property Code Section 82.157, read October 2026, opens with an exception, "Except as provided by Subsection (c)", and then puts the duty on a unit owner other than a declarant who intends to sell a unit. Before executing a contract or conveying the unit, that owner must furnish the purchaser a current copy of the declaration, the bylaws, any association rules and a resale certificate, which the association issues.

The association furnishes the certificate to the selling unit owner or the owner's agent once it receives a written request by a unit owner. The section says a unit owner and does not say which of two, so the decree's answer to who is to sell is the place to start. Where the association does not furnish the certificate within its 10-day period, the section gives the unit owner a substitute. The affidavit must state that the unit owner requested information from the association concerning its financial condition and that the association did not timely provide the certificate or the information required in it. Once an owner has furnished one, the owner and the purchaser may agree in writing to waive the requirement to furnish a certificate.

Among the certificate's contents are the amount of the periodic common expense assessment, the unpaid common expenses or special assessments currently due and payable from the selling unit owner, and other unpaid fees or amounts payable to the association by the selling unit owner. Under Subsection (d), a certificate does not affect the association's right to recover debts or claims that arise or become due after the date it is prepared, or its lien on a unit securing payment of future assessments.

Texas Property Code Section 82.113 states what the association is owed in the meantime: an assessment levied by the association against a unit or unit owner is a personal obligation of the unit owner and is secured by a continuing lien on the unit and on rents and insurance proceeds received by the unit owner and relating to the owner's unit. Between two owners, which one pays an assessment, and who pays at closing, is for the decree or the agreement to say, so read it there.

How do the dates run?

Each of these dates runs from the event its source names.

Texas Family Code Section 6.702: except as provided by Subsection (c), the court may not grant a divorce before the 60th day after the date the suit was filed.

Section 6.502: not later than the 30th day after the date a receiver is appointed under Subsection (a)(5), the receiver gives notice of the appointment to each lienholder of any property under the receiver's control, and not later than the seventh day after that date the court issues written findings of fact and conclusions of law in support of the appointment.

Section 9.007: the trial court may not render an order to assist in the implementation of or to clarify the property division made or approved in the decree before the 30th day after the date the final judgment is signed.

Texas Property Code Section 82.157: the association furnishes the resale certificate not later than the 10th day after the date of receiving a written request by a unit owner, and the certificate must have been prepared not earlier than three months before the date it is delivered to the purchaser. A sale date written into the decree or the agreement runs as that document states it.

What do the Harris County records and the title company ask for?

A deed to a unit at The Royalton is recorded by the Real Property Department of the Harris County Clerk's Office, which records documents pertaining to real property in Harris County; the building's declaration and its amendments sit in the office's Condominium records. The department accepts only original documents or certified copies of court documents, and a certified copy cannot be altered.

For copies of a decree, the Texas State Law Library, read October 2026, sends a reader to the district court clerk's office of the county where the divorce was finalized, because the district clerk keeps the case files. The building's records are in Harris County, where that office is the Harris County District Clerk; a suit finalized in another county leaves its file with that county's district clerk.

The title company's part is written on its commitment. The Texas Department of Insurance's Form T-7, the Commitment for Title Insurance, effective January 2014 as read in October 2026, says the promise to insure is conditioned on requirements and that Schedule C of the Commitment lists them. For a unit sold under a decree, the company's requirements are whatever it writes on that file's Schedule C, so ask for the schedule in writing.

Which questions belong to your attorney, and which to the title company?

Every question of the form "should I" belongs to your own family-law attorney: whether to ask the court for an order, which order fits the unit, whether Section 5.001 reaches it, how the decree or the agreement allocates the net proceeds and the assessments, and what the exceptions named above provide, among them the one in the waiting-period section of the Texas Family Code and the one that opens the resale section of the Texas Property Code.

What one file requires belongs to the title company handling it: which court documents it needs to see, in what form, and whose signatures must be notarized. Its Schedule C is the written answer, and Form T-7 itself tells a reader that the matters shown in Schedules B and C may be discussed with an attorney.

Bring the decree, any approved agreement and the association's resale certificate to both conversations.